


The Pretender

by TheEvangelion



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Feels, Gentleness, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Soft Villanelle - Freeform, Villanelle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEvangelion/pseuds/TheEvangelion
Summary: “I’m going to take you to Vienna, Eve, as soon as you’re better. I’m going to take you to see Arabella, at the opera house, and I’m going to buy you something expensive to wear and spill champagne all over it so I have a reason to take it off and lay you down and miss the show. Stay with me, my love. Just… stay with me a little longer.” Villanelle made her believe it was true.“Thank you,” Eve barely whispered the words.





	The Pretender

There were worse ways to die, she had seen a few of them first hand.

There was dying of a heart attack on the toilet, that seemed pretty embarrassing, the kind of thing people would murmur about from the beginning of the service right to the end and for some time afterwards. Then, there was the unfunny stuff too, the stuff that made her slightly grateful for her current predicament. Dying of cancer, dying of a slow-acting poison, dying after a long period of torture with fingernails being ripped from their beds and the skin flayed off her spine. That would be worse, Eve thought decisively. She held a weak palm to the wound against her lower chest and took shallow, measured breaths. This wouldn’t take very long. The feeling of her left lung filling up with blood was almost comforting.

The front door clicked open and closed, then footsteps wandered down the tiled hallway.

“Hello? Eve? I’m hungry—” Villanelle stopped as she crossed the threshold of the kitchen and surveyed the scene. Her eyes flitted to the half-open back door and then the dying woman sprawled on the kitchen floor in a growing puddle of her own blood. She paused for a moment and blinked. “Do you have any croissants left, for later on?” Villanelle nodded to the cupboard where she knew they were kept.

“There might be one left?” Eve licked her dry lips. “You’ll… you’ll have to check the best before date. I was supposed to go grocery shopping later.”

“I don’t think you will need to.” Villanelle sighed and stepped forward to appraise the wound. “Gunshot or stab wound?” She asked, her voice simultaneously full of warmth and disinterest.

“The former.” Eve closed her eyes as the little perses knelt down beside her.

There was a period of silence that hurt more than the gunshot wound. It stretched on for a length of time that Eve simply didn’t have to waste, and she knew, wholeheartedly, that her little troublemaker was using it to think of something pithy and cruel to say… if only because Villanelle needed to protect herself from what was about to happen.

“It’s alright,” Eve whispered and opened her eyes. “If you’re scared, that’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.” She forced a small smile.

Villanelle laughed boisterously at that.

“You think I’m scared?” She smirked and wrinkled her brow in disbelief.

“I know you are.” Eve pushed her tongue around her teeth and stared deep into those predatory, unfeeling, beautifully bright eyes. “I think you’re scared of how out of control it makes you feel, that you weren’t the one who did this.” She paused and winced into the dulling pain. “I think you’re scared of the empty space I’m going to leave in your tiny, insulated world because you know you’re only interesting when there’s someone there to watch.”

“That’s rude even for you, Eve Polastri,” Villanelle whispered quietly.

“If I can’t be honest with you when I’m dying on my kitchen floor then when can I?” Eve grinned and tasted blood on the back of her tongue. But then Villanelle smiled back, a tiny genuine smile that was so pained and fragile but persistent, as if she knew this was precious time that shouldn’t be wasted with showboating or posturing. It flattened Eve with how final this all was and dampened the grin right out of her cheeks.

“So this is it?” Villanelle slightly bit her lip and looked to the ceiling, to the cupboards, then back to her favourite obsession. “This is how you leave me, Eve?” It was said accusingly.

“What were you like as a little girl?” Eve blurted as every question she had always wanted to ask but never found the time to careened around her mind with frightening speed. “Did you… did you have friends? Did you play sports? Were you good in school?” She rushed it all out.

“I was quiet and thoughtful, precocious, maybe.” Villanelle paused and exhaled calmly. “I played netball, I was goal attack.” Her warm delicate hand settled on top of the bleeding wound and cradled Eve’s weak, slipping fingers. “What’s your favourite restaurant?” She lifted a brow.

“Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Eve blinked rapidly. “It’s easy and cheap, I guess.”

“Whenever I go to Nobu I’ll pretend that was your favourite place, and I’ll think of you.” Villanelle was completely sincere.

“Are you… are you going to kill whoever did this to me?” Eve vaguely hoped for it.

“Would you like me to do that, Eve?” Villanelle clutched her fingers tight and seemed deeply concerned with soothing whatever her plaything was feeling.

“Yes,” Eve achingly whispered.

Villanelle pulled back slightly and appraised what was in front of her. There was a grave expression on her face, brow heavy, eyes blinking slowly as if she had long since came to terms with it all.

“You’re going to pass out from the blood loss very soon. Your eyes will start to get very heavy, and you will try to keep them open, but then the sleep will just… takeover. You will drift away quietly and the blood will pump out of your body until your heart stops.” It was listed and ordered, prepared for and made okay in the psychopath’s mind because it could be predicted. “Then, you will die. And I will eat your croissant and call for an ambulance to collect your body. After that, I will find and hurt the person who did this to you very slowly, Eve. I will give them my best work.”

“Thank you,” Eve whispered and felt strangely okay. “Is there anything you want to ask me, while you still have the chance?”

“No.” Villanelle laid down beside her and slipped an arm around her tummy. Eve felt a nose push through her hair and inhale deeply, the tip of it dragging and finally coming to rest against her earlobe. “Do you have anything to ask me?” It was whispered softly.

“Could you—” She felt humiliated for thinking about, for wanting it, but Eve wanted to slip away on her own terms, desperately. “Could you pretend, for me?” She chewed the corner of her mouth. “I… I think I want to go gently.”

“I thought you were braver than that.”

“I’m not."

“You really want me to pretend for you? It’s a little theatrical.”

“Without theatrics, you and I have nothing.” Eve clenched her jaw, and she hated and loved that maddening woman simultaneously, the emotions thrumming against one another until they blurred and melted into something there wasn’t words for.

Slowly, Villanelle sat back up and paused for a moment. Her expression was calm and collected, somber, bored maybe. She inhaled and looked away, and then she turned back around a completely different woman.

“My love,” Villanelle wept and choked, eyes snapped wide, seemingly frightened, seemingly horrified. Her hands pressed against the trickling wound and applied pressure, shakily. “Oh god, my darling, what did they do to you?” Eve watched as bright eyes looked up at her, then darted back down to the injury. “No, no, no,” Villanelle whispered and gritted her teeth, blood pumping through her clenching fingers as she pretended to do what she already knew was too late to be done. “My darling, no, not like this.” The words ached out into the silence.

“Don’t ever let them catch you, Oksana. Don’t let them put you in a concrete box again because you’re too talented,” Eve whispered with a small smirk.

“Don’t you leave me, Eve!” Villanelle growled and sobbed with a fist wound tight into the blood soaked cardigan. “Please, I can’t lose you, Eve, I can’t…” she said the name as if it were a well to pour all of her tiny emotions into for safekeeping.

Eve grew silent.

“You were the only one who could have ever catched me.” Villanelle pushed forward and rested her head against a pale, cool brow. “I’m going to take you to Vienna, Eve, as soon as you’re better. I’m going to take you to see Arabella, at the opera house, and I’m going to buy you something expensive to wear and spill champagne all over it so I have a reason to take it off and lay you down and miss the show. Stay with me, my love, just… stay with me a little longer.” Villanelle made her believe it was true.

“Thank you,” Eve barely whispered the words.

She closed her eyes and couldn’t open them again, but she listened, too tired to do anything else, but she listened and listened and held on a little bit because of it.

“I love you.” The limpness of her body was scooped and cradled in arms that were both strong yet delicate, muscular and soft. “I love you, Eve, is that what you need to hear so you can go? Is that what you’re waiting for?” A warm set of lips pressed against her parted mouth.

A few minutes passed but Villanelle made sure she was gone before she stopped pretending. She placed two fingers against her throat just to be sure there wasn’t even the faintest of pulses, when she was certain, that was when the tears dried instantly and her expression became calm and vacant once more.

The body in her arms was neither heavy or light, maybe somewhere in the middle, enough to make her biceps ache slightly but not too heavy that it was a struggle. Eve looked as if she had simply fallen asleep in Villanelle’s arms, as if she might wake up any moment, she wouldn’t, of course, because she had died and been dead for some minutes, and still, knowing all of that, Villanelle couldn’t put her body down.

She stared ahead at the cabinets underneath the sink without a flicker of emotion on her face, the woman held tight in her arms and clutched close to her chest.

“Goodbye, Eve Polastri.” Villanelle gently placed her down. “I’ll run like it’s always you who is chasing me.” 

Villanelle leaned down and kissed her forehead, her mind drifting to the croissant in cupboard and her grumbling stomach.


End file.
